1) Adrian Grenier has good taste in music. The “Entourage” star, in town with business partner Peter Glatzer to promote their new SHFT House Wine at the Vila Joya resort’s International Gourmet Festival in Albufeira, hit an afterparty at local hot spot Le Club. It was around 1:30 a.m., before the house-music crowd really rolled in, so Grenier plugged in his iPhone playlist and took over the front lounge’s DJ booth. As befitting a man who lives in Brooklyn, he spun an eclectic mix that skewed indie with Passion Pit and Sleigh Bells. By 4 a.m., both the front lounge and back dance floor (where DJ Tom Novy proved that there’s no bigger club banger than Calvin Harris’ “Feel So Close”) were mobbed. Grenier stayed until past 5 a.m., DJing for and dancing with an appreciative crowd that included chef Todd English, who spent the day filming at the fish market for his PBS show, and Tamar Poyser, winner of Rachael Ray’s “Hey, Can You Cook?! All-Stars” competition. (English would later tweet that he loved Grenier’s wine — produced by sustainable vineyards in Paso Robles, Calif. — and wants it in his restaurants.)

2) Norbert Niederkofler is a real person and he cooks in the Italian Dolomites.The two-Michelin-starred Niederkofler from the Alto Adige region was one of literally a dozen chefs at the festival’s Dieter Koschina & Friends blowout dinner. Niederkofler made risotto with parmesan cream. But the big winner of the night, surprisingly, was the Netherlands. Three-Michelin-starred Dutch chef Jonnie Boer’s artistic spiral of creamy liver with crab was the first and perhaps best course of the night. Fellow Dutch chef/two-Michelin-starred up-and-comer Jacob Jan Boerma also dazzled with his langoustine-and-foam dish. It wasn’t all Dutch mastery, though, of course. Michelin-starred British chef Nigel Haworth’s perfectly cooked lobster with caviar and a mini poppy-seed roll (filled with more lobster) was simultaneously decadent and delicate.

3) Europe’s focus on Michelin stars gets exhausting quickly. The festival is all about bringing in Michelin-starred chefs (including New York’s Shaun Hergatt and April Bloomfield), and food cost is no issue. (Rumors abounded that the kitchen held dozens of champagne magnums just for the chefs.) Chefs can ask for any ingredients they want and the festival will buy them, so dinners skew toward caviar, truffles, foam, deconstruction and lots of preciousness. (That’s why we wanted to hug Mario Lohninger, a young Michelin-starred German chef who ignored the mine-is-bigger-than-yours aspect of the festival and closed the Koschina dinner with Irish beef cheek braised with tomatoes — true comfort food for both moguls and peasants.)

One Lithuanian magnate who sponsors the festival is known for flying in caviar and vodka, along with multiple female companions (the number of women who sat with him at dinner alternated from three to five to seven), on his private jet. This kind of extravagance is why some love Europe, but our most satisfying meals in Albufeira were much simpler: chicken piri-piri, fries and extra hot sauce for 12 euros per person at Teodosio O Rei Dos Frangos (“king of the chickens”), clams with garlic and perfectly grilled sole for 20 euros per person at Clube Pesca e Nautica Desportiva. We also headed to the Malhadinha vineyard in Aletenjo, where a group including Grenier and Michael Imperioli enjoyed a feast of black-foot pigs that were grown on-site. It was simple farm-to-table cuisine, and it was really good.